United States presidential election, 1860

The United States presidential election, 1860 was held on 6 November 1860. Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln ran as the Republican Party's nominee, with Hannibal Hamlin serving as his running mate. Lincoln had made a reputation for himself as an opponent of the expansion of slavery, and he had previously debated the Democratic Party presidential nominee Stephen A. Douglas when they were both campaigning for a US Senate seat in Illinois in 1858.

Southerners feared that Lincoln's election would lead to the abolition of slavery, and 51 reactionary Southern Democrats walked out of the Democratic National Convention in April 1860 due to a platform dispute. The election therefore saw a rising Republican Party face a Democratic Party that was divided between Douglas' conservative northern Democrats and John C. Breckinridge's reactionary Southern Democrats, and the conservative Constitutional Union Party also ran John Bell as its candidate, hoping to preserve the union at all costs. The Constitutional Union Party won the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, taking many traditionally-Democratic states. The Southern Democrats won all of the Deep South, while Douglas won only New Jersey and Missouri. The Republicans were able to win all of the northeast (bar New Jersey) and much of the Midwest and the American West, giving them the presidency.

Four months before Lincoln's inauguration, eleven southern states announced their secession from the USA in reaction to the Republican victory, and they would go on to form the pro-slavery Confederate States of America. The Southern Democrats led the new secessionist country, and the southerners took up arms to defend states' rights against the government's attempts to abolish slavery across the country. Therefore, the 1860 election was the most direct cause of the American Civil War of 1861-1865.

Results

 * Liberal dot.png Abraham Lincoln/Hannibal Hamlin - 180 votes
 * Reactionary dot.png John C. Breckinridge/Joseph Lane - 72 votes
 * Conservative dot.png John Bell/Edward Everett - 39 votes
 * Conservative dot.png Stephen A. Douglas/Herschel V. Johnson - 12 votes